Africa Overland - unfinished: Rising visa fees and bureaucratic issues additional to expensive flights, continuously worsening security situation for whites in the Sahel, and the cut-off through Angola and Congo (Democratic Republic) convinced us to visit other culture regions in future. The 6th stage on the Westroute will bring our Toyo back home.

Two years ago we crossed Ivory Coast into Ghana. A visit to the North was not advisable due to the rebels of the Forces Nouvelles. In autumn 2010 Laurent Gbagbo was dropped by presidential elections. But only after violent conflicts UN troops with support of the Frenchmen could arrest Gbago on 11 April 2011 in Abidjan. Since then the country divided for many years is united again: The rebels took over and are now the “new force” seizing power in the whole country. The days of the grey unvisited confluences might be counted now even in the North.

But a visit will still be exciting: Many whites had fled during unrests and now - six months later - the first ones slowly consider whether they are going to return. There was no information from other travellers in relevant forums, of course. Only the surfer Brad recommended Assini as a surf spot in the South of the Ivory Coast. He didn’t experience any bad things during the unrests as he lived far away from the main roads at the beach.

There was obviously a lot of new personal in charge at the border crossings and at numerous road blocks. With olive coloured uniforms and combat boots the mainly young men rather leave an aggressive impression than a serious presentation of official government authority. With our white UN-like Landcruiser they treated us correctly in most cases. We could observe an opposite treatment of the local cab drivers. If they might do the smallest rule offence they were stopped by a whistling concert and probably couldn’t go off for free.

We just passed such a potentially unpleasant post when I stated a Confluence lying only eight kilometres off the tar to the East. So we had to turn and pass the post a second time. We both already thought about how to explain the visit of a Confluence when we later would have to pass the Kalashnikovs a third time and hoped they would not see us leaving the tar at the beginning of the village. We followed a bush track which I figured out by Google Earth. Sometimes it wasn’t clear whether we followed a track or a stream bed. Questioning faces of pedestrians and moped drivers coming across made clear that normally no white faced couple is driving here in a white Toyota Landcruiser. After six kilometres we reached a knee-deep stream. We decided not to face experiments and parked the Toyo. We followed a shrub path by food eastward and passed some palm trees and a small settlement. After 1.5 kilometres we left the path to the North into a light shrub forest. Along an area fenced-in by barbed wire big leafed trees were growing in a line. After 800 meters we crossed the barbed wire and reached the Confluence after 200 meters.

Along the barbed wire fence we returned to the shrub path. The Toyo was still parked untouched. Back on the road northward the crew of the post was fortunately holding a sleep.